OBJECTIVES: Abnormally high glucose levels (dysglycemia) increase with age. Epidemiological studies suggest that dysglycemia is a risk factor for cognitive impairment but the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms remain unclear. The objective of this study was to examine the relation of dysglycemia clinical categories (normal glucose tolerance (NGT), pre-diabetes, undiagnosed diabetes, known diabetes) with brain structure in older adults. We also assessed the relation between dysglycemia and cognitive performance...

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) often report cognitive dysfunction, although neuropsychological evaluation findings may not correlate with subjective concerns. One factor that may explain this lack of correspondence is the controlled testing environment, which differs from busier settings where cognitive lapses are noted to occur. This study used a novel environmental manipulation to determine whether individuals with MS who report cognitive dysfunction are more vulnerable to the effects of auditory distraction during neuropsychological testing...

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the utility of an evidence-based assessment (EBA) model to establish a multimodal set of tools for identifying students at risk for perceived post-injury academic problems. METHODS: Participants included 142 students diagnosed with concussion (age: M=14.95; SD=1.80; 59% male), evaluated within 4 weeks of injury (median=16 days). Demographics, pre-injury history, self- and parent-report measures assessing symptom severity and executive functions, and cognitive test performance were examined as predictors of self-reported post-injury academic problems...

A comprehensive evaluation, including the assessment of neurobehavioral symptoms, has been instituted at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system to address the large number of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF) Veterans returning with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs). The Validity-10 is measure of symptom overreporting embedded within the Neurobehavioral Symptom Inventory, a component of the comprehensive evaluation that assesses postconcussive symptom severity...

Past studies have examined the ability of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) to discriminate valid from invalid performance in adults using both individual embedded validity indicators (EVIs) and multivariate approaches. This study is designed to investigate whether the two most stable of these indicators-failures to maintain set (FMS) and the logistical regression equation S-BLRE-can be extended to pediatric populations. The classification accuracy for FMS and S-BLRE was examined in a mixed clinical sample of 226 children aged 7 to 17 years (64...

Automatic computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have been widely used in classification of patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease (AD). This paper presents an automatic CAD system based on histogram feature extraction from single-subject gray matter similarity-matrix for classifying the AD patients from healthy controls (HC) using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The proposed CAD system is composed of five stages. In the first stage, segmentation is employed to perform pre-processing on the MRI images, and segment into gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using the voxel-based morphometric toolbox procedure...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: While impaired cognitive performance is common in multiple sclerosis (MS), it has been largely underdiagnosed. Here a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening algorithm is proposed to identify patients at highest risk of cognitive impairment. The objective was to examine whether assessment of lesion burden together with whole brain atrophy on MRI improves our ability to identify cognitively impaired MS patients. METHODS: Of the 1253 patients enrolled in the study, 1052 patients with all cognitive, volumetric MRI and clinical data available were included in the analysis...

We describe the development and validation of The Brief Cognitive Impairment Scale (BCIS), a cognitive screening instrument designed for persons with severe-stage dementia. Psychometric analyses were performed on neuropsychological data from long-term care residents (N = 247) who completed a brief battery of tests, including the BCIS. A principle component analysis yielded three factors that provide insight into how persons with severe dementia cognitively process information and may tolerate specific aspects of social stimulation, such as during personal care...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive dysfunction has been recognized as a cardinal feature of schizophrenia. Elucidating the neurobiological substrates of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia would help identify the underlying mechanism of this disorder. The rs1064395 single nucleotide polymorphism, within the gene encoding neurocan (NCAN), is reported to be associated with schizophrenia in European populations and may influence brain structure in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: In this study, we aimed to explore whether NCAN rs1064395 confers some risk for schizophrenia and cognitive dysfunction in Han Chinese...

OBJECTIVE: The aim was to examine the reliability and validity of two measures of learning and memory within the CogState Computerized Battery: the One Card Learning (OCL) and the Continuous Paired Associative Learning (CPAL). Comparison of various reliable change measures was also included to examine rate of correct cognitive change classification, in particular, when using the Within-Subject Standard Deviation (WSD). METHOD: The OCL and the CPAL tests were administered twice and compared to standard and experimental versions of conventional neuropsychological tests in patients with seizure disorders (Baseline n = 80, Follow-up = 54) and university students (Baseline n = 89, Follow-up n = 87)...

OBJECTIVE: Evaluating assessment validity is expected in neuropsychological evaluation, particularly in cases with identified secondary gain, where malingering or somatization may be present. Assessed with standalone measures and embedded indices, all within the testing portion of the examination, research on validity of self-report in the clinical interview is limited. Based on experience with litigation-involved examinees recovering from mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), it was hypothesized that inconsistently reported date of injury (DOI) and/or loss of consciousness (LOC) might predict invalid performance on neurocognitive testing...

Assessment of cognitive and motor functions is fundamental for developmental and neuropsychological profiling. Assessments are usually conducted on an individual basis, with a trained examiner, using standardized paper and pencil tests, and can take up to an hour or more to complete, depending on the nature of the test. This makes traditional standardized assessments of child development largely unsuitable for use in low-income countries. Touch screen tablets afford the opportunity to assess cognitive functions in groups of participants, with untrained administrators, with precision recording of responses, thus automating the assessment process...

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the utility of combining data from measures of performance validity and symptom validity among Veterans undergoing neuropsychological evaluation for mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). BACKGROUND: Persistent cognitive impairments following mTBI are often reported by returning combat veterans. However, objectively-measured cognitive deficits are not common among individuals with mTBI, raising the question of whether negative impression management influences self-ratings...

BACKGROUND: The dramatic technological advances witnessed in recent years have resulted in a great opportunity for changing the way neuropsychological evaluations may be performed in clinical practice. Particularly, serious games have been posed as the cornerstone of this still incipient paradigm-shift, as they have characteristics that make them especially advantageous in trying to overcome limitations associated with traditional pen-and-paper based neuropsychological tests: they can be easily administered and they can feature complex environments for the evaluation of neuropsychological constructs that are difficult to evaluate through traditional tests...

Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) opens a window on large-scale organization of brain function. However, establishing relationships between resting-state brain activity and cognitive or clinical scores is still a difficult task, in particular in terms of prediction as would be meaningful for clinical applications such as early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. In this work, we employed partial least square regression under cross-validation scheme to predict episodic memory performance from functional connectivity (FC) patterns in a set of fifty-five MCI subjects for whom rs-fMRI acquisition and neuropsychological evaluation was carried out...

Neuropsychological evaluations are increasingly performed in forensic contexts, including in criminal settings where security sometimes cannot be compromised to facilitate evaluation according to standardized procedures. Interpretation of nonstandardized assessment results poses significant challenges for the neuropsychologist. Research is limited in regard to the validation of neuropsychological test accommodation and modification practices that deviate from standard test administration; there is no published research regarding the effects of hand restraints upon neuropsychological evaluation results...

This study investigates the utility of the Portuguese version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) as a screening-method for identifying cognitive dysfunction (CD) in multiple sclerosis (MS). The 118 participants with comprehensive neuropsychological assessment were divided into two subgroups: (I) MS group (n = 59) and (II) control group (n = 59). The MS patients were classified as cognitively intact (n = 26) or impaired (n = 33, 56%). The results indicated that the MoCA is a psychometrically valid instrument in assessment of MS patients...

More than 75% of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) seeking medical attention are mild, and outcome in that group is heterogeneous. Until sensitive and valid biomarkers are identified, methods are needed to classify mild TBI into more homogeneous subgroups. Four hundred twenty-one adults with mild TBI were divided into groups based on Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) 13-15 without computed tomography (CT) abnormalities, GCS 15 with CT abnormalities, and GCS 13-14 with CT abnormalities, and were compared with 120 trauma controls on 1-month and 1-year outcomes...